Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Police investigating historical child abuse in Rochdale say more than 40 men have said they were victims of the former MP Cyril Smith or other men.

Greater Manchester Police (GMP) said 24 men have alleged they were sexually and physically abused at Knowl View school in Rochdale between 1960 and 1987.

Twenty of those have said they were abused by Smith, who died in 2010.

At least one victim has told detectives he was raped by the man who was Liberal MP for Rochdale from 1972 to 1992.

Police said they had interviewed 21 men aged between 35 and 80 under caution for a variety of offences but there were still a number of other suspects to be traced and interviewed.

A separate investigation is focusing on Smith, who is alleged to have preyed on youngsters both at Knowl View, where five complainants have come forward, and another school in Rochdale for "difficult children", Cambridge House, from where 10 complainants have spoken to police.

Double child abuse agony for Rochdale family
By Jane Deith 16 September 2014

Two children from one family were sexually abused in separate paedophile scandals in Rochdale the BBC has found.

A boy was sexually assaulted at Knowl View School and a decade later his sister was groomed for sex by a gang of Asian men in the town.

Their mother only learned from the BBC that her son, who died recently, had been a victim.

She said she did not think it was a coincidence that both abuse scandals happened in the same town.

BBC Radio 4's File on 4 programme discovered the link while investigating Knowl View, a school for boys with special educational needs.

The former Rochdale MP Cyril Smith sexually assaulted young boys at the residential school.

The programme was shown a list of children who were at Knowl View during the 1990s....

Failure to end abuse

In the early 1990s, three official reports were written about sexual abuse at the school but they were not made public.

Greater Manchester Police is investigating whether there was a criminal cover-up.

Current MP for Rochdale Simon Danczuk is now questioning whether the failure to end the abuse at Knowl View led to a climate in which the subsequent child sex ring in Rochdale was allowed to emerge.

"I've often wondered whether there's a connection between the two and whether the culture was influenced by the fact that Smith's abuse had been ignored by people in the town and whether that impacted on the Rochdale grooming scandal.

"Knowl View links the historic to the recent is the point I'm making... it's a continuum of abuse by individuals, but also by groups because Knowl View is about groups of abusers coming together just like the grooming gangs that have been involved with the girls."....http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-29159427